Re: Kurt Cagle Comments on Microsoft and XAML

Arron Ferguson wrote:
> I just finished watching Star Wars Empire Strikes back and I still have
> Darth Vader's theme song stuck in my head. Having said that Kurt is
> probably not that far off the mark.

     Considering Microsoft never met a software market it didn't want to
dominate, I'd say that's a safe bet.

> My guess is they'll come up swinging now that they're quickly losing
> browser market share (I'm sure they're aware of all the polls out
> there).

     I think in the short term, you might actually see them make
improvements in Internet Explorer. These improvements will be limited in
scope to prevent breaking of old content, though, even when that content 
violates web standards. A good example would be the alpha channel
support for PNG images. They could easily fix this without breaking
legacy content.

> Problem is, his suggestion of getting the opposition going on this
> doesn't seem likely (I'm assuming he's referring to the Open Source
> community). Everybody's too busy going their own way. Having said that,
> that's probably the strength for the current Web: it's a total
> hodge-podge of many technologies, many organizations, many companies and
> many developers.

     First of all, I think you miss his point. He's saying that
opposition would be more likely to develop critical mass if Microsoft
announces a real release date for XAML. The lack of focus on a specific
standard is in part a belief that XAML's release is still way off in the
distance. If there was a hard release date, people would start looking
where that fits into their own development schedules and realize that
they don't have nearly as much time as they thought they did.

     As for a hodge-podge of standards, I really don't see that. There
may be some diversity in some areas, but the most successful 
technologies on the web (HTTP, HTML, DOM, ECMAscript, CSS) are based on 
open standards developed by several web standards organizations.

> Microsoft would have to offer one really really sweet deal for the
> entire Web as we know it to fold and for everyone to move over to
> XAML/.NET/Windows 200x. That would have to be the mother of all killer
> apps.

     To some extent I agree with you. However, without reasonable 
competition deployed prior to the release of XAML, Microsoft could come 
in with a complete and comprehensive suite of development tools an grab 
a significant portion of the development market before anyone knows what 
hit them. It would take a decade to undo this kind of damage if we're 
not prepared.

> (my 0.02)

     That's in New Yen, right? ;)



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